The long-term aim of this project is to clone and express in E. coli all the genes from Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax. This pathogen poses a serious biowarfare threat yet has been relatively understudied due to the low incidence of natural infection. An important first step would be to identify all antigenic proteins, vaccine candidates, therapeutic targets, and develop diagnostics based on DNA sequence differences and immunological responses. All of these goals can be met starting with a clone set of all genes appropriately expressed in a safe, easy to manipulate surrogate host like E. coli. During Phase I of this project, covered by the present application, genes from the two virulence plasmids and a limited number of chromosomal genes will be cloned and expressed and probed with immunological reagents.